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“This is Omran. He’s alive. We wanted you to know.”

These were the words of CNN anchor, Kate Bolduan, when she talked about five year old Omran Daqneesh sitting in a chair, his face bloodied, staring in space, having just been pulled from rubble that was once his home in the historic city Aleppo in Syria.

Once in a while something grabs our hearts and won’t let us go. That is how I responded to Omran’s picture. But it was the CNN film clip that did me in.

When Omran was first placed in the chair by the rescue worker you can see his lips pucker for just a second as they often do when children are about to cry. He wipes his face, sees the blood on his hand, and rubs his hands on the seat cover trying to wipe away the blood.

It is then that the shock overcomes him and he begins staring in space unable to move. He didn’t cry, Kate Bolduan said. She was right. He didn’t cry, but she cried for him, and so did I.

I am sure I was not alone. And I am sure many of us also cried for Omran’s ten year old brother who died from the missile blast, and the 4500 other children of Aleppo who have died since the Battle of Aleppo began a year ago as part of the Syrian civil war.

I believe my response – your response – to Omran’s picture arose from the innate sense that we humans are bonded together by our common humanity, and when we see innocent suffering, any suffering, we feel it in our soul.

In the truest sense Omran is our child because he is everyone’s child, innocently playing as five year olds do and then his world blows up and the next thing he knows he is sitting in a chair covered with blood and in a state of shock.

He is my child, his family is my family, and yours for the simple reason that we are all part of one another. It is the nature of our humanity.

That bond is one of the most profound realities of our existence, transcending all differences, whether race, creed, color, nationality, religion, gender, we are all connected by our shared humanity.

It is such a simple, yet profound concept.

You would think that all of us here in America would get it. Our country was built on it, on the fact that people from all around the world came here and built a great nation on the foundation of their common humanity.

Have we always honored our connectedness? No. Have we betrayed common decency in the denial of our oneness? Yes.

But it is there anyway. “Any man’s death diminished me,” wrote the 17the century English clergy/poet John Donne, “for I am a part of mankind.”

That is what Omran’s picture reminded me of. In him I saw my child sitting there in shock, staring in space, silently pleading for me or someone to pick him up, hold him tight, and assure him he was safe.

Of course, there have always been Americans who have refused to acknowledge our common humanity, but as a nation we have consistently rejected their attitude, rejected their desire to build differences into barriers.

Yet something is happening that is tearing at the fabric of our common life. There is an ugly spirit loose in our land that wants to divide us, make us hate one another, exploit our fears of terrorism so that we see Omran and everyone like him and his family as our enemy.

There are voices of extremism that believe being nasty is how you win elections, who believe that when you appeal to the worst in people they vote for you.

There are voices that don’t care how they win as long as they win. They believe the ends DO justify the means. “Divide and conquer” is their political strategy because it seems to work.

I confess that I don’t understand how we got here, how we reached the point where so many Americans are listening to people who are trying to undermine everything we stand for and believe in.

I want to believe in the future of our country, but there are moments when I wonder where we are headed.

Then I remember the picture of little Omran and I realize that he is the reason not to lose hope, all the children of the world are the reason not to lose hope.

They need us too much for us to give in to the destructive voices that want us to believe we must live in and by fear, that ruthlessness and callousness are required to match the brutality of our enemies, that we must act like our enemies to conquer them, as if we will magically revert back to our best selves once we do.

Seeing little Omran staring in space, paralyzed by shock, made me cry, but it also opened my eyes to the beauty of our common humanity, and I knew that I could not give in to the meanness, anger, bitterness, hatred, and hostility that are driving many Americans to think and act the way they think and act.

Count me naïve, but I will never believe fear can give birth to hope, that love arises from hate, or that the seeds of peace grow in the soil of anger and bitterness.

Count me naïve, but I will continue to believe we share more in common with people around the world than differences, that at the end of the day they want for their children what we want for ours.

Once in a while we have the opportunity to show one another and the world what we believe in, what we stand for, what our hopes and dreams are for the future.

That is what I think this election is all about. It is about choosing to affirm belief in our common humanity.

It is about showing ourselves and the world that we have the moral courage to do what is right because we believe in what is right.

I think about all of this because I saw a picture of a little boy who could say nothing but stare into my eyes, my heart, my soul. I hope I will never get his picture out of my mind.

“This is Omran. He’s alive. We wanted you to know.”